Transport workers and hoteliers contributed to prevent HIV transmission among migrants at Indo-Nepal

1. Transport workers and hoteliers contributed to prevent HIV transmission among migrants at Indo-Nepal Prakash Madai1, Rokaiya Praween2, Prakash Pandeya3, Bipin Thapa4 1NEEDS Kanchanpur, 2CARE India, 3CARE Nepal, 4Gangotri Rural Development Forum Introduction Nepalese migrants going to India are vulnerable to HIV infection at the destination cities because of the lack of information, and service access. HIV prevention, care and support information to Nepalese migrant is urgently required at source community in Nepal and destination cities in India (HIV/AIDS Strategy 2011-16 Nepal). Hoteliers and transport workers are two major service providing groups who are in direct contact with Mobile population during their course of mobility. In fact it won’t be unjustifiable to recognize these stakeholders as one of key players who can create enabling environment to migrant and their families in respect of service delivery and support. EMPHASIS project has defined these two groups as target population and has been working jointly at source and transit to reduce the vulnerability related to HIV & unsafe mobility. There are a total of 21 hoteliers engaged in group at Achham, Kanchanpur and Kailali. Materials and Methods • 50,000 Nepalese migrants and their spouses reached at Indo Nepal border with HIV prevention messages and they were tracked at destination and source both and found enriched information and behavior changed. Reaching by project workers at both transits in India and Nepal side reinforced to fuel the information and able to change the behavior to access information and services including VCT/STI and ART. Results can be observed as below; • Engagement of hoteliers and transport workers (private sectors) for expansion of service and support at transits in both Nepal and India. • Strengthened linkage between two groups for identifying local resources to support cases of harassment and HIV. • Developed linkage with service providers operating at transit across the border. Project mobilized 40 hoteliers and 40 transport workers (rickshaw pullars/tangawallas) as peer educators at transits in India and Nepal. Trained peer educators are providing HIV prevention, care and support information to migrants including the service site information at source and destination in Delhi and Mumbai in India. Video shows, IEC materials, HIV counseling, referrals for VCT and STI services and condom promotion activities are carried out at the transit locations by the transport workers and hoteliers at the Indo Nepal transit in Far Western Region. Transport workers and hoteliers used their own structure to contribute to prevent HIV. The program reached the mobile population of 47 districts of Nepal and contributed to changing the behaviour. Results " I serve many customers from my hotel every day and most of them are migrant. Not only that some of them shares their incidence of getting robbed and harassed during their mobility in India but I used to only sympathize and could do nothing more. I was amazed when another hotelier like me shared their experience on delivering support and information on HIV & safe mobility to migrants through their hotel and thankful that they made us aware of their practice. So, this event has provided a new direction that even I can do something for our migrant group who really needsit". - SaritaSwar ,hotelier of Achham district Conclusions Engagement of hoteliers and transport workers at Indo-Nepal border to provide HIV/AIDS information has significantly contributed to reduce the vulnerability of Nepalese migrant populations. Ownership taken by hoteliers and transport workers at transit has opened up the new thought to engage private sectors in HIV prevention efforts. Hotels where migrants used to stay during their travel and the transport workers who help to cross the border both are the key stakeholders and this engagement can move the project initiative for a longer impact. Outcome from this initiative can be replicated to other borders of Indo-Nepal and borders in similar setting of Nepal and the larger context in the world